Nicky-Nan, Reservist eBook

CHAPTER XX.

MISS OLIVER PROFFERS ASSISTANCE.

Although this narrative has faintly attempted to trace
it here and there in operation, no one can keep tally
with rumour in Polpier, or render any convincing account
of its secret ways. It were far easier to hunt
thistledown.

The Penhaligon family were packing, preparing for
the great move into Aun’ Bunney’s derelict
cottage. ’Bert and ’Beida had been
given to understand—­had made sure in fact—­that
the move would be made, at earliest, in the week before
Michaelmas Day. For some reason or other Mrs
Penhaligon had changed her mind, and was hurrying things
forward almost feverishly. ’Beida—­who
for a year or so had been taken more and more into
her mother’s confidence—­suddenly found
herself up against a dead wall of mystery and obstinacy.
The growing girl was puzzled—­driven to
consult ’Bert about it; and a Polpier woman
is driven far before she seeks advice from husband
or brother.

She might have spared herself the humiliation, too.
For ’Bert, when she cornered him, gave no help
at all. Yet he was positive enough. [It takes
some experience to discover what painted laths men
are.]

“Some woman’s rot!” decided ’Bert
with a shrug of his shoulders. “Father
bein’ away, she’s worryin’, an’
wants to get it over. She don’t consult
me, so I’ve no call to tell her to take things
cooler.” The trumpet, after thus uttering
no uncertain sound, tailed off upon the word ‘females.’

“Get along with your ’females’!”
fired up ’Beida, springing to arms for her sex.
“I’d like to know where the world’d
be without us. But don’t you see that ‘tisn’
like Mother to be so daggin’ to quit
the old house?”

“She wants to get the grievin’ over, I
tell you,” ’Bert maintained.

As for ’Biades, he was rather more—­certainly
not less—­of a nuisance than children of
his age usually are when a family intends a move.
He asked a thousand questions, wandered among packing-cases
as in a maze, and, if his presence were forgotten
for a moment, sat down and howled. On being
picked up and righted he would account for his emotion
quite absurdly yet lucidly and in a way that wrung
all hearts. On the second day of packing he
looked out from a zareba of furniture under which
he had contrived to crawl, and demanded—­
“What’s a Spy?”

“A Spy?” his mother echoed after he had
repeated the question three or four times. “A
Spy is a wicked man: worse nor a Prooshian.”

“What’s a Prooshian?”

“A Prooshian,” said Mrs Penhaligon, inverting
one bedroom chair on another, “is a kind o’
German, and by all accounts the p’isonest.
A Spy is worse nor even a Prooshian, because he pretends
he isn’t till he’ve wormed hisself into
your confidence, an’ then he comes out in his
true colours, an’ the next thing you know you’re
stabbed in the back in the dark.” Mrs
Penhaligon might miss to be lucid in explanation,
but never to be vivid.